This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 25, 2009 - Death is not pretty early in the morning on the doorstep. A small dead bird was left at our front door, lying by the newspaper as if it might at any moment fly away. I knew it would not.
Like other birds before it, it was a gift to our household by Feisty, a cat who lives with us. Feisty is a killer of birds, and every so often he leaves one for us, like rent.
We have had as many as four cats at one time in our household - we are cat lovers of a sort, I guess. The other three, true housecats, would not have known what to do with a bird. Feisty is different, a long-haired gray Persian with the soul of a hunter. While the other three cats slept safely in the house with us, Feisty spends most nights outside, prowling.
Feisty's nocturnal donations are not well received by my family. More than once it has been suggested, as we donate the bird to the trashman, that perhaps Feisty would be happier living in the country.
As a biologist I try to take a more scientific view. I tell my girls that getting rid of Feisty is unwarranted, because hunting cats like Feisty actually help birds, in a Darwinian sort of way.
Like an evolutionary quality control check, I explain, predators ensure that only those individuals of a population that are better-suited to their environment contribute to the next generation, by the simple expedient of removing the lesser-suited. By taking the birds that are least able to escape predation -- the sick and the old -- Feisty culls the local bird population, leaving it, on average, a little better off.
That's what I tell my girls. It all makes sense, from a biological point of view, and it is a story they have heard before, in movies like Never Cry Wolf, and The Lion King. So, Feisty is given a reprieve and survives to hunt another night.
What I haven't told my girls is how little evidence actually backs up this pretty defense of Feisty's behavior. My explanation may be couched in scientific language, but without proof this "predator-as-purifier" tale is no more than a hypothesis. It might be true, and then again it might not. By such thin string has Feisty's future with our family hung.
Recently the string became a strong cable. Two French biologists put the hypothesis I had been using to defend Feisty to the test. To my great relief, it was supported.
Drs. Anders Moller and Johannes Erritzoe of the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris devised a simple way to test the hypothesis. They compared the health of birds killed by domestic cats like Feisty with that of birds killed in accidents such as flying into glass windows or moving cars. Glass windows do not select for the weak or infirm -- a sickly bird flies into a glass window and breaks its neck just as easily as a healthy bird. If cats are actually selecting the less-healthy birds, their prey should include a larger proportion of sickly individuals than those felled by flying into glass windows.
How can we know what birds are sickly? Drs. Moller and Erritzoe examined the size of the dead birds' spleens. The size of its spleen is a good indicator of how healthy a bird is. Birds experiencing a lot of infections, or harboring a lot of parasites, have smaller spleens than healthy birds.
They examined 18 species of birds, more than 500 individuals. In all but two species (robins and goldcrests) they found that the spleens of birds killed by cats were significantly smaller than those killed accidently. We're not splitting hairs here, talking about some minor statistical difference.
Spleens were on average a third smaller in cat-killed birds. In five bird species (blackcaps, house sparrows, lesser whitethroats, skylarks, and spotted flycatchers), the spleens of birds pounced on by cats were less than half the size of those killed by flying at speed into glass windows or moving cars.
As a control to be sure that additional factors were not operating, the Paris biologists checked for other differences between birds killed by cats and birds killed accidentally. Weight, sex and wing length (all of which you could imagine might be important) were not significant. Cat-killed birds had, on average, the same weight, proportion of females and wing length as accident-killed birds.
One other factor did make a difference: age. About 50 percent of the birds killed accidentally were young, while fully 70 percent of the birds killed by cats were. Apparently it's not quite so easy to catch an experienced old codger as it is a callow youth.
So, Feisty was just doing Darwin's duty, I pleaded, informing my girls that the birds he catches would soon have died anyway. But a dead bird on a doorstep argues louder than any science, and they remained unconvinced.
They are my daughters, and thus not ones to give in without a fight. Scouring the Internet, they assembled this counter-argument: Predatory house cats not unlike Feisty, as well as feral cats (domesticated cats that have been abandoned to the wild), are causing major problems for native bird populations of England, New Zealand and Australia, as well as here in the United States. Although house cats like Feisty have the predatory instincts of their ancestors, they seem to lack the restraint that their wild relatives have. Most wild cats hunt only when hungry, but pet and feral cats seem to "love the kill," not killing for food but for sport.
So, Darwin and I lost this argument. It seems I must restrict Feisty's hunting expeditions after all. While a little pruning may benefit a bird population, wholesale slaughter only devastates it. I will always see a lion whenever I look at Feisty on the prowl, but it will be a lion restricted to indoor hunting.
George B. Johnson's "On Science" column looks at scientific issues and explains them in an accessible manner.
Johnson, Ph.D., professor emeritus of Biology at Washington University, has taught biology and genetics to undergraduates for more than 30 years. Also professor of genetics at Washington University’s School of Medicine, Johnson is a student of population genetics and evolution, renowned for his pioneering studies of genetic variability. He has authored more than 50 scientific publications and seven texts.
As the founding director of The Living World, the education center at the St Louis Zoo, from 1987 to 1990, he was responsible for developing innovative high-tech exhibits and new educational programs.
Copyright George Johnson